Droid Attack Spells Doom for iPhone

Last year, while I was on a business trip, my wife surprised me during a phone call by telling me that she was going to finally enter the smartphone age and purchase a Motorola Droid. This was surprising on a number of levels. She's notoriously tight-fisted with money for starters. (Is there a nice way to say that?) So, she isn't the type of person to jump at the chance to toss $80 a month into the wind. She's notably ambivalent about technology, too, which might be a shocker to some given to whom she's married. To her, computers are a tool, and years of Mac usage did nothing to indoctrinate her into the Apple cult. (In fact, she chose to use a Windows 7-based Dell laptop last year.) And then there's the Droid itself. This is a decidedly masculine smartphone—the antidote to Apple's namby-pamby iPhone—and it was marketed then (as now) in a very aggressive fashion.

"You're getting ... a Droid?" I could hardly believe it.

But she did it. And for the past year, she's been quite happy with her choice. She's a Gmail and Google Calendar user, so the Android OS makes sense for her. And watching her latch onto things like Facebook has been both fascinating and disturbing.

But I'm not here to write about that. No, this is about something even more disturbing than my wife posting to Facebook. Last week, after a flurry of sudden work-related activity, I found myself the somewhat bewildered recipient of my own Android-based smartphone, in this case a Droid X. The reasons for this are complex, but basically I'm now an employee of Penton, the owner of this newsletter and my site, and I'm expected to meet certain corporate expectations. I held out as long as I could.

So, unlike much of the world, I'm not "switching" to Android. In fact, I'll be buying a Windows Phone-based smartphone as soon as I can. Over the past several months, I've been using a developer-oriented prototype device as my primary phone so I could write a book about Windows Phone 7 titled Windows Phone 7 Secrets. What I discovered, to my delight if not surprise, is that I truly love this smartphone OS. As far as I'm concerned, Windows Phone is the way to go.

But for now I have this Droid X. And I have to say, suddenly, I get it. I understand why this thing is surpassing the iPhone as we speak. Aside from one killer mistake—a mistake that would be oh so easy to fix—this phone is hands-down superior to anything designed in Cupertino.

First, the screen. While some will be turned off by its palatial dimensions, others will swoon with delight. I fall into the latter category. The Droid X screen is a whopping 4.3 inches diagonally, dramatically bigger than the screen on any iPhone or, for that matter, my wife's first generation Droid. It runs at a stunning 854 x 480 and is simply gorgeous to look at.

The other hardware is stellar, too. The Droid X is lightning fast, with a 1 GHz processor and a powerful GPU, and I've never noticed any pauses or waiting times. It plays games and movies full-screen, full-speed, and can handle virtually anything you throw at it. (Assuming you can figure out how to get that content on the device; more on that in a moment.) The camera is a whopping 8 megapixels and is quite decent—the first smartphone camera I've seen that could possibly replace a point and click. It takes 1280 x 720 (720p) video at up to 24 FPS. We're in a different world, people.

From a software perspective, the Android OS hits all the high points. It supports customizable home screens, has a wealth of high-quality applications, and the important apps—Gmail, Calendar, and so on—all work exactly right. This is an email triaging machine.

Where the Droid X—Android, really—falls apart is on the services side. As with Apple and soon Microsoft, Google supports Android with an online marketplace, in this case the Android Market. It's horrible. And I don't just mean it's lacking in some vague way, I mean that it's an absolute disgrace. For all the criticism Apple has received for its heavily curated App Store, Google should be held accountable for the unprofessional, low-quality Android Market, which features an unbelievable amount of borderline illegal content that rips off intellectual property in obvious and egregious ways. For example, there are dozens of "The Simpsons" rip-offs, with obvious and purposefully misspelled names. It's just shameful.

In the Android Market, the fears of Google are realized: This is a company that simply doesn't care about protecting the rights of other companies. I'm honestly shocked at how bad this is. Just finding the content you want in the store is difficult, because it's not laid out in any logical fashion. I searched for—and found—most of my favorite iPhone apps in Android versions. But if I didn't know they existed, I'd never know what to search for, and the Android market does nothing to promote decent apps. It's just a terrible experience, worse still because it's something Google could easily fix.

This is perhaps less dramatic, but because Google doesn't (yet) have an online store to match Apple's iTunes Store, the Android experience for loading, syncing, finding, and playing media (music, movies, and other content) is truly second rate and, I suspect, must vary from phone to phone. I was able to cobble together a rough iTunes equivalent with a terrible bit of software called DoubleTwist, but as had been the case previously with my wife's phone, it took over an hour to get it to work at all, and then the actual content syncing occurred at glacial speeds. If this is the state of the art for Android content sync, it's time to start over.

Aside from the abysmal online store experiences, however, Android and the Droid X are first rate. And looking ahead, I'll be comparing this system to the upcoming first generation Windows Phone 7 devices and to Apple's latest iPhone to see where these systems fall. For now, however, Android and the Droid X are, warts and all, already neck and neck with the iPhone 4. It's scary to think how one-sided this would be if Google just put a handful of UI experts on the marketplace. Game over, Apple. Game over.

Discuss this Article 11

The DroidX is a great device, though it does have a couple of shortcomings. For one it's still on the 2.1 version of the OS and there are some big bugs in the native Exchange support of 2.1 on the DroidX.

Second there is a peculiar bug that causes the device to unpredictably change screens when it's in the car dock.

Overall I really like it and agree with your comments above; the screen is gorgeous, the camera is excellent and it really is (when it works) a perfect device for triaging e-mail and taking your calendar on the road. To say nothing of the very good navigation capabilities.

Hopefully the 2.2 version of the OS will be available soon and will fix the major issues.

I dunno Paul, I think you're being a bit overly dramatic with your "game over" speak just a bit. Although I have been an iPhone user for about three years or so, I have to support several different Android devices in my role as Network Administrator where I work. I couldnt put my finger on what exactly I didnt like as much about the Android phones until recently but it finally hit me the other day: they seem to be the MySpace of the Smartphone world, in my opinion. Our users have customized these things to the point where it hurts my eyes to have to look at them, just like MySpace pages have always done. I just think theres a lot to be said for the somewhat restrictive (OK, very restrictive) environment that Apple provides with the iPhone. Its polished, its stable and its gorgeous and a lot of users are going to prefer that. As you and Leo mention frequently on Windows Weekly, competition is a very good thing and I think theres more than enough room for both of these devices in the market. I just think its not even close to being game over for the iPhone. When and if the iPhone goes to Verizon, this will be made clearer.

I dunno Paul, I think you're being a bit overly dramatic with your "game over" speak just a bit. Although I have been an iPhone user for about three years or so, I have to support several different Android devices in my role as Network Administrator where I work. I couldnt put my finger on what exactly I didnt like as much about the Android phones until recently but it finally hit me the other day: they seem to be the MySpace of the Smartphone world, in my opinion. Our users have customized these things to the point where it hurts my eyes to have to look at them, just like MySpace pages have always done. I just think theres a lot to be said for the somewhat restrictive (OK, very restrictive) environment that Apple provides with the iPhone. Its polished, its stable and its gorgeous and a lot of users are going to prefer that. As you and Leo mention frequently on Windows Weekly, competition is a very good thing and I think theres more than enough room for both of these devices in the market. I just think its not even close to being game over for the iPhone. When and if the iPhone goes to Verizon, this will be made clearer.

I'd like to think that 2.2 will fix major issues, but one glaring one for Exchange Activesync corporate users is no encryption of data at rest. Nada. HTC and Motorola are both telling me that there are not plans for it. Google needs to step up about this. The worst part is that the Droid X connects to Activesync, when it does not meet the policies implemented. This is not good as you think you're protected, when you are not. Similar to what happened to iPhone before they fixed it.

I couldn't agree more with your commentary here. My wife had an iPhone, then I gave her my Moto Droid when I upgraded to the X. I have never seen her so taken with a technology. It is hands-down better. I love the X, but I too am anxiously awaiting my Windows Phone 7. My Zune HD just works better than the iPod's I have played with and if that is any indication of the usability of the new Microsoft devices, things should be headed the right way. With fingers crossed...

I agree the Android market interface via the phone sux.
So instead, I use websites to search for apps and then use the phone's 'scanner' app to scan the bar code on the website and then the phone downloads/installs the app.
Right now my favorite website is androlib.com
You can sort by free, most downloaded, rating. Filter out low rated apps...etc.

Agreed, Thomas. Definitely not game over...more like game on! I can't see Apple just passively giving over market share. With good competition, all vendors products will improve. Not sure how I feel about Microsoft's phone 7, but it should help raise the bar as well.

Doom for iPhone? Game Over? Words like this make me cringe because its sad that folks in our industry make allegiances to devices that only last 2 years. Many of our Android users still do not know how to use their phones (apps, etc) and Android is just catching up with the Exchange support.

As far as I have been able to determine, there is no practical way to sync Outlook with Android. This makes Android a non-starter for me. There are some kluges to sync Outlook to GMail, and then GMail to Android, but these are not acceptable. Based on perusals of quite a number of blogs and forums, if somebody comes up with a way to sync Outlook and Android there will be a whole 'nother stampede to Android.

I agree. Game over is really absurd. The apps and subscription services *are* the game, the email & facebook apps on the iphone are wonderful, and phones with poorly designed apps or subscription services are just not going to convince me to switch. Microsoft's lack of a play here is shameful given the company's history of owning the market prior to the iphone. So no, while I do think that Apple will have substantial competition over the next few years, 'game over' and 'spells doom' stuff is just lowering your rating in my eyes, and makes me less likely to click through to these articles...do you think Apple will sit tight while this happens? Unlikely

Well, the iphone4 has a much better screen. It is not as large, but has a much higher resolution. 960*640 vs 854*480.

The iphone4's camera is 5MP, but as anyone who knows anything about digital cameras more MP is not always better. The iphone4 also does 30 fps at 720p resolution, which is superior to the Droid X.

"The iPhone 4 won the majority of our battles--but barely. Both phones are incredibly fast, have superb displays, and come loaded with multimedia features. Some of our tests, such as OS and media playback, come down to personal preference. On the other hand, our display, still camera, and camcorder tests clearly prove that the iPhone 4 is stronger in those categories. And the iPhone 4 won our data-speed and voice-quality tests, though they were confined to San Francisco; the results could be different in other parts of the country." - http://www.pcworld.com/article/199844/iphone_4_vs_droid_x_a_headtohead_c...

So how does that make the Droid X better? The Iphone4 has better hardware, a much better app store, and overall a better UI. Maybe if you actually used an iphone instead of just outright stating "I'm Saying No to the iPhone 4 ", you would have a much better idea.

There is nothing wrong with the Droid, its a nice phone, but as usual Paul's hatred for Apple is just skewing his view and he is trying to distort the facts.